Sunday, May 19, 2024

How do you take zeros and 1s (on or off switches) and make them make sense in regard to designing computers and programming languages?

Once people discovered you could do this then all sorts of possibilities existed. First you needed either a mechanical engine of some sort OR you need banks of on or off switches. Eventually the off switches represented Zero and the "ON" switches represented one.

The next step was to use a Binary system or (Base 2 system) of numbers so that you could represent data in a mathematical way. One of the first uses for this was cannon trajectories used in battles around the world. Another first use was in figuring out mathematical possibilities for use in building a nuclear weapon. Before that the Enigma was used to create and to decipher codes during world war II also. Turing had something to do with this advance which eventually led to Eniac computer mainframe built by a university in Pennsylvania.

Here is more about the binary system which made computers based on on and off  electrical switches possible:

 begin quotes:
Definitions from Oxford LanguagesLearn more
bi·na·ry sys·tem
/ˈbīnərē ˌsistəm,ˈbīˌnerē ˌsistəm/
noun
  1. 1.
    a system in which information can be expressed by combinations of the digits 0 and 1.
  2. 2.
    a system consisting of two parts.
    "the binary system of state and public schools"
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